


Fermi Paradox

by PostcardsfromTheoryland



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [7]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dehumanization, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Vivisection, Whump, You've been warned, freaked my beta out with that one, nothing super graphic though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:48:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27312880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostcardsfromTheoryland/pseuds/PostcardsfromTheoryland
Summary: The Fermi Paradox is the apparent contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial life and the lack of observed evidence for that life. If there is a likelihood of earth-like planets throughout the universe, then it stands to reason those planets are also capable of sustaining life. But no confirmation of intelligent alien life has ever been found.Until now.
Relationships: Adam & Keith (Voltron), Colleen Holt & Keith, Colleen Holt & Pidge | Katie Holt
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1688515
Comments: 34
Kudos: 66





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Bad Things Happen Bingo Prompt: Made a Lab Rat

“Keith, I’m just trying to help.”

“No,” Keith counters, sneering at him like he had when Takashi had first introduced the two of them. Keith had been convinced that Adam would hate him and decided he would hate Adam first. “You’re trying to make yourself less guilty. I don’t need your help, I don’t need your pity. I need you to _fucking listen to me_.”

“I am listening to you, but you’re not making sense.” It is too early for this discussion; Adam hasn’t even had his coffee yet, but Iverson had insisted. ‘Talk to your ex-prodigy,’ he’d said. ‘Kid’s in a tailspin,’ he’d said. Why Adam had thought it was a good idea to do that first thing in the morning, he isn’t sure.

No. He is sure. Because he’d panicked about losing Keith, too, on top of everything else, and instead of thinking things through, he’d tried to immediately fix everything and called Keith into his office before first period even began. It’s going about as well as can be expected.

“Even if the Garrison is lying about how the crash was caused, it doesn’t change the result. Takashi is gone and sitting here, throwing away everything you’ve worked toward, isn’t going to bring him back. You need to accept it.”

“Why do you even care,” Keith asks, slouching farther down into his seat.

“Because I’m trying to take care of you.”

“So it is guilt.”

“Keith…”

“You don’t get to care _now_ , not after everything that happened. You didn’t care earlier and you still don’t.”

“Just because things didn’t work out between Takashi and me doesn’t mean that I don’t care about you. It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about _him_ , either. But he’s gone, Keith.”

“The minute things got a little difficult, you left,” Keith accuses. “Just like everyone else. Doesn’t sound like caring to me.”

And he gets it. He does. For a kid in Keith’s position, someone who’s been abandoned more times than Adam would like to think about, his idea of caring for someone has probably gotten tied up in physical presence.

Adam feels a little out of his depth on this one.

“Putting all of that aside, we still need to work on your grades. If you’re struggling with things, why don’t you come to my office for a couple hours each night? You can ask any questions you have on your work while I get lesson plans ready for the next day.” A little heavy-handed, yeah, but if Keith needs Adam physically here to cement that he cares about the kid, then he’ll do that.

But Keith just scoffs at him. “You’re trying to replace Shiro, and it’s not going to work. Shiro wouldn’t-”

“Takashi is dead, Keith.” Keith looks at him like Adam has just slapped him in the face, and it occurs to him that it might be the first time anyone has actually said that out loud to Keith. “You’re fixating on conspiracy theories, and it’s not healthy. You need to start accepting it. I know you’re hurting, okay? I’m hurting, too. I know everything went to hell between all of us, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love him.”

“Bullshit. If you had ever really loved him at all you’d be _looking for him_!”

There’s a split second of vulnerability on Keith’s face, like he realizes he’s just crossed a major line but is too angry to back down. Adam is ready to snap back and give as good as he gets, but...no. Keith is like a brushfire - quick to burn if he’s given fuel to fight with, but Adam is the adult here, and as much as Keith has just hurt him, it will be better for both of them to table this discussion for a bit.

"Keith. Get out of my office, please."

"Gladly, Lieutenant Wasan, _Sir_ ," Keith snarls, taking the extra time to grab the hydraulic door as he leaves and try to force it to slam.

Adam knows from experience that it's not nearly as satisfying as it looks.

He’ll try again in a couple days after Keith has had some time to cool off. In the meantime, there are always papers to grade…

* * *

Everyone is still walking on eggshells around Keith, so when they call him to Sanda’s office, there’s none of the normal jeering that usually accompanies one of those announcements. His fellow cadets are all silent and still as Keith stomps out of the room, escorted by one of the lieutenants whose name he never bothered to learn.

Keith’s sure this is about his slipping grades and sim scores. Sending him straight to the admiral about it is a little odd, but Adam probably escalated it after their meeting this morning since Keith wasn’t listening to him. Trying to scare him into shaping up by bringing out the big guns.

Joke’s on Adam, though. Depression makes it really easy to not be intimidated by authority figures.

The lieutenant leads him into Sanda’s office, and Keith goes on the offensive before he’s even fully in the door.

“Look, I know my grades are shit, but I’m trying, ok? Cut me some fucking slack.” He doesn’t tell them he’s only trying because he knows Shiro would be disappointed if Keith flunked out: he’s still trying to mentor Keith from the grave, apparently.

_(And yeah, maybe Keith has sort of started to accept that even if the Garrison did lie about pilot error, there’s no way the Kerberos crew can still be alive. But he’s not about to admit that to Adam)_

It’s only after he’s been nudged toward the seat in front of Sanda’s desk that he realizes there are more people in here with them. And surprisingly, none of them are Iverson, who is technically Keith’s commanding officer since he’s in charge of the fourth-year cadets. Actually, the only person here he recognizes is Sanda.

“Sit down please cadet,” Sanda says, barely even looking at him. “This meeting isn't about your frankly abysmal performance. This is Dr. Brandt,” she motions to the man on her right, the one with the bleach blond hair. ”He’s one of the Garrison’s top scientists, and he has some questions for you. Think of this as a chance to be honest; it will be so much better for you in the long run."

That thing about depression making it easy not to be scared of authority figures? Yeah, that was a lie. Because there’s something _off_ about Dr. Brandt’s eyes, something that Keith _really_ doesn’t like.

"Hello, Keith." There's a strange pause before his name, as if the scientist isn't sure what to call him. Keith just nods in response. "What are you?"

What the fuck? It has to be some kind of trick question. Is this a weird motivational thing? "Um, I'm a cadet at the Galaxy Garrison? I’m a pilot?"

"Sure, sure, right now you are. But what _are_ you?"

“I don't understand the question. Sir," Keith adds hastily. This is quickly turning into one of those instances where he probably shouldn’t make these people any angrier than they already seem to be.

"I think you do."

Keith is lost; nothing has made sense since he got the news about Shiro, but this is a new level of confusion. He throws a concerned glance at the Admiral, but her face, stony and cold, isn't exactly reassuring.

"Um, could Lieutenant Wasan be here for this? I don't really know what's going on," Keith asks. He's angry at Adam, fucking furious about everything that happened and still hurting from their meeting this morning, but he knows Adam is in his corner and is much better at all these hidden meanings and nonverbal cues than Keith is. It's always been Adam at his back for these kinds of things because Shiro had a tendency toward "righteous fury" instead of "tactful politics" where Keith is concerned.

"This isn't about Lieutenant Wasan, this is about you,” Dr. Brandt shoots back, hands slamming onto Sanda’s desk and an angry glint in his eyes that sets Keith even further on edge. “I'll ask one more time: what. are. you."

"I don't know!" Keith shouts as he leaps up from the chair. "I don't know what answer you want!" 

He means to leave the Admiral’s office - if they won’t bring Adam in for this meeting, Keith will go find him himself - but then there’s movement out of the corner of his eye, and before Keith can react, one of the other scientists has plunged some kind of syringe into his neck.

Adrenaline floods his system and Keith immediately starts fighting his way through the officers in front of him, snarling at them and punching and kicking and biting anything he can reach. But whatever they gave him must be fast-acting, because his limbs are getting heavy, and the door seems like it’s getting further and further away. Keith’s always been good at self-defense, but four scientists and an admiral versus one of him weren’t good odds to begin with, and that was before the sedative. Someone gets a good blow in to the side of Keith’s head and he stumbles and falls against Sanda’s desk, dimly registering that he’s knocked several stacks of papers off in the process.

His mind is screaming at him to get up but it’s all he can do to slump onto the cold linoleum, one arm stretched out uselessly toward the door as everything goes hazy, then grey. And then black.

* * *

“Keith," Adam sighs as he continues to knock on the door of the rundown shack. "I know you’re there, can you please talk to me?”

Keith continues not to answer.

Is there anything else that can go wrong at this point?

Iverson had pulled him into his office to discuss Keith just as his last class of the day had ended. Before Adam can get a word out about the disastrous meeting yesterday morning, however, the Commander had dropped a bomb on him.

”He pulled a runner, Wasan,” Iverson had said. “Wasn’t in his room this morning, hasn’t attended any classes today, and a few things have mysteriously vanished. Shirogane’s old hoverbike is missing from the garage, and the Admiral reported a few hundred dollars stolen from her desk. She has Kogane on the security feeds taking the money and the bike. We understand he’s grieving, but there’s a limit to what we can excuse. Given his failing grades and the stolen property, he’s been expelled. The Admiral has been gracious enough not to press charges, but Kogane isn’t welcome on campus again if you manage to track him down.”

Adam barely managed to give Iverson a clumsy salute before cancelling his evening meetings and driving out into the desert.

He’s got an expelled cadet on his hands, and it’s going to take everything Adam has to convince Keith just to listen to him and let him help. Iverson had brought up Keith’s social worker, but _like hell_ is Adam letting him get shipped back to the group home after everything. What Keith doesn’t know is that Adam had signed up to be a foster parent the moment he realized how serious Takashi had been about Keith. Keith’s going to need to do a lot better than stealing a bike to get rid of Adam.

But first, Adam needs to find him. He slumps down onto the porch, back against the door, and contemplates his options. It is actually possible that Keith isn't here since Takashi’s old hover isn't anywhere near the shack. Would Keith really have gone through the trouble of parking it so far away just on the off-chance that Adam remembered the shack’s location and came looking for him?

Maybe Keith actually is out. It's only been a day, if that, since he left the Garrison, so he might be in town buying supplies. Why Keith chose _now_ of all times to run away, Adam doesn't know, but he does know that Keith would come here first.

At least, he hopes Keith came out here, and that he hasn’t tried to rough it on the streets in town or, god forbid, driven off into the desert and gotten lost.

Well. Maybe he should let Keith make the first move. Adam pulls the small notebook out of his jacket pocket and writes a quick message, telling Keith he's been by and he wants to talk and if he doesn't get a response he'll be back at the same time tomorrow. He folds it up and tucks it securely into the screen door so it's easily visible but won't get blown away by any desert winds.

He can only hope Keith will accept his help.

* * *

It’s late, and Katie is tired, but the middle of the night is the best time to do this. Mom had nearly caught her once before, and she wasn’t really keen to repeat that specific you-know-this-could-be-considered-treason lecture.

There’s one more set of files she needs to look through, but just from the descriptions and timestamps it doesn’t look promising. Still, no stone unturned and all that. She opens the earliest file, something titled Subject054_KK_Experiment001 dated about a month ago. It’s a video, some scientists with their backs to the camera and looking at something on a table. One of them is talking, taking introductory notes, yeah, yeah subject is blah blah blah, and Katie is about to just close out of it, because this is clearly a room in the Garrison science building’s sub-basement and hence not relevant to the Kerberos mission when the video cuts to a different shot, one she knows is from a camera in the ceiling right above the observation table, and she drops the can of soda she was holding.

There’s a fucking _person_ on that table.

She recognizes him, she thinks. K-something. Kevin? He’d hung around with Shiro before the launch, he was a cadet at the Garrison. Fuck, he’d _been to their house_.

She rewinds the video back to the introduction and actually listens this time.

“Introductory notes to Experiment 001 for Subject 054, alias Kogane,” a voice is intoning. She’d met a lot of the Garrison doctors and scientists, but this one doesn’t sound familiar. “Subject appears human but genetic sequencing reveals two additional nucleotide bases. Subject claimed no knowledge of extraterrestrial background, but a knife of unknown metal was recovered from subject’s domicile. Administered 300mg of ketamine approximately one hour ago; subject is now showing signs of regaining consciousness, much earlier than anticipated.”

Katie closes the video, not sure that she can handle whatever they’re about to do to him. Instead she goes back to the folder. It’s not a full listing; she’d only managed to scrape some of the data off the servers before her access window closed. But the most recent video is from less than a week ago. And it’s titled Experiment186.

Katie barely makes it to the bathroom before she’s throwing up. What the _fuck_ is the Garrison doing? That was a _kid_ , a kid barely older than she is, a kid who must have been grieving just like she and her mom are from the loss of the Kerberos Mission, and they’ve got him strapped to a table like a frog to dissect.

Shit. She’s going to need to tell her mom.

* * *

Adam has spent every night for the past three weeks looking for Keith. The note he'd left at the old shack hadn't been answered, and when he came around the next day it also clearly hadn't been touched. No one had been there, and Keith might be an occasional drama queen but he wouldn't have abandoned the shack just to avoid Adam.

He’d begun his search in town, hanging around the parks and open, public spaces, asking a few of the homeless population if they recognized Keith’s photo. They all said no, but then again they were pretty wary of Garrison officers in uniform, and if Keith were actually hiding out here, he would have made himself scarce.

God damnit, what he wouldn’t give to go back in time and fix things with Keith before it had come to this, to convince the boy that they were still family before Keith had somehow decided running away had been the best option.

He tries the motels next. Keith had stolen a fair bit of cash, after all, so he’d be able to afford a room, at least for a while. But that’s a dead end, too: there are only three in town and none of them say someone matching Keith’s description has been there. He even looks over their logbooks and none of the names sound familiar; Keith, for all his other skills, has never had a good imagination for aliases.

The only larger civilization within hoverbike-engine distance is Platt City. It would be a daunting prospect to search for one person there, like a needle in a haystack for someone who doesn’t want to be found. But Adam knows Keith, perhaps better than Keith would like him too, and he knows that Keith _hates_ cities. Angry and hurting and scared, Keith would seek solace in open spaces and empty roads, not in the gentrified, urban sprawl that is Platt City.

But the city does have a bus depot.

Adam might exaggerate his credentials, just a bit, but it gets him access to the security camera footage. He wishes, not for the first time, that Matt were still here as he manually searches through hours of video feeds. Matt could have come up with some kind of program to isolate Keith based on his physical description. Then again, if Matt and the rest of the Kerberos crew were here, this whole exercise would hardly be necessary, because right now Adam would have been at home, having dinner with Takashi and Keith and not futilely searching grainy footage at a bus depot.

It doesn’t matter anyway, because there’s no one even close to Keith’s appearance in the week following his abrupt departure from the Garrison. So without finding him at his shack, in town, or any of the easily accessible routes out of the area, Adam has no choice but to start searching the desert surrounding the Garrison.

It occurs to Adam, in a vague, nauseating kind of way, that this type of searching doesn’t usually have positive outcomes. That the likelihood of finding Keith and scolding him for running off is incredibly slim if Keith really has been in the desert for this whole time.

That this has changed from a rescue mission to a recovery operation.

* * *

“Get up.”

Keith has half a moment to relish the fact that the restraints are gone before he registers the hand pulling sharply on his wrist and the voice’s owner. With the exception of Dr. Brandt, the scientists have never bothered to tell him their names. Keith has taken to calling this one Mean Bald Man, and Mean Bald Man seems to be in a Mood this morning.

Maybe their funding is getting cut, Keith wonders wryly, since it seems like they still haven’t found whatever it is they’re looking for despite the amount of tests they’ve already run.

Mean Bald Man shoves him into a small, bare room, containing nothing but a treadmill and some wires.

“You’re going to run on this,” he explains gruffly, attaching electrodes to Keith’s bare chest and neck, “until you pass out. After which point you will be allowed food and water.”

...It’s going to be one of those days, isn’t it.

* * *

"Mom? I need to talk to you…"

Colleen just barely contains a sigh as she puts down the book she’d been reading. That phrase combined with that tone of voice is never a good sign.

“What is it, Katie?”

She looks like she hadn’t slept again, but that was hardly new. Katie’s sleep schedule had only gone from bad to worse after they got the news about the Kerberos Mission. Still, she seems pale and small in a way that she normally doesn’t, huddled over the laptop in her arms. "I hacked the Garrison systems again."

Honestly, that’s pretty much what Colleen was expecting, but something must have happened for Katie to actually tell her about it.

“Do I need to get bail money together?”

"No, no one noticed!” Katie protests. “Besides, I can’t just stop looking, I just know they're hiding info about Kerberos! But um, last night I...found some stuff."

Colleen feels herself get interested despite her best intentions. She really should not be enabling her daughter about this. "About the mission?"

"No. Or, not really, I don't think. Do you remember, there was a cadet, he hung out with Lieutenant Shirogane a bunch?"

"Keith, yeah. Why, have you seen him? I asked Admiral Sanda about how he was doing, and she told me he ran away. If you’ve seen him anywhere I need to let the Garrison know."

“I...don’t think he ran away, actually,” Katie says. She’s even paler than before, looking a little green, like she’s getting sick. She puts her laptop down (on top of Colleen’s book, really, Katie?) and opens it up before she plays a video.

Colleen doesn’t recognize the two scientists with their backs to the wall-mounted observation camera, but in the background, hovering near the door, she sees Niels Brandt. She had met him once and only once, but the man left her feeling unsettled for a week. Sam had brushed it off, calling him a little eccentric but ultimately harmless; now she wonders if she should have trusted her instincts.

Because one of the other scientists calls their subject “Alias Kogane” and a very disturbing picture starts taking shape. The shot shifts to the ceiling-mounted camera, but it only confirms her suspicions. That is indeed Keith, unconscious and tied down on the table.

Colleen lets the video play, hoping to get more information on who the other scientists are or why exactly any procedures this inhumane had been approved by the Garrison IRB. But she can only bear to play it long enough to see Keith slowly push through the sedative and open his eyes, long enough to hear him yell "what the fuck is going on?" but his voice cracks and he sounds terrified because who wouldn't be, in his position?

She can’t stand it anymore and reaches over to pause the video, though that almost makes it worse: in the still image, Keith’s eyes are blown wide with fear and looking over in the direction she knows Dr. Brandt is just off-camera.

“There are more videos,” Katie whispers.

“How many?”

“I haven’t looked at the others yet, but there’s almost 200 of them. It’s...the new ones are recent. I think he’s still there.”

"I need to contact Admiral Sanda." Colleen is already standing and reaching for her datapad before she’s really thought about it. She’ll need to come up with some story that doesn’t incriminate Katie to explain how she knows about all this, but it can’t continue. She can’t let some innocent boy get experimented on for one moment longer. But then Katie’s hand is on her wrist, stopping her short.

"What if Sanda’s in on it?"

The idea is preposterous at first, but then she stops to think about the woman who had barely offered condolences after the Kerberos Mission, who had blamed the entire failure on a pilot that the entire Holt family had the utmost faith in, who had apparently lied to Colleen’s face about the mission, according to some of the documents Katie has turned up. She wants to give the Admiral the benefit of the doubt, but if Keith’s safety (and Colleen’s and Katie’s) could hinge on it…

“You have a point,” she grudgingly admits.

“So...what do we do?”

“ _We_ are not going to do anything. This is way too dangerous for you. You are going to give me all of those video files and then erase them from your laptop. And I am going to…”

But going to what? It’s not as if she can just stroll into the Garrison and declare that she’s taking Keith home with her. Katie just raises an eyebrow at her.

Damnit.

“You can't do this alone. Face it Mom, I'm a better hacker than you, and you know they're going to have cameras and shit..er, stuff. What would happen to you if the Garrison gets footage of you trying to break their cadet out of the science wing? What would happen to _me_?"

Colleen hates that Katie is right. She hates that Sam and Matt aren’t here to help them even more.

“Didn’t Lieutenant Shirogane have a boyfriend?” Katie asks. “Should we contact him?”

Having someone on the inside would be helpful, but she knows things had ended badly between Adam, Shiro, and Keith. What if he was the one who had tipped them off to Keith’s apparent genetic….otherworldliness? The thought feels ugly and harsh, but after seeing that video, she’s not feeling particularly trusting.

“I think this needs to be a Holt thing,” Colleen says finally.

“I uh, already have a program to mess with the cameras,” Katie admits, not nearly as guilty as she should be. “So we can go right now.”

She understands, of course. Seeing what the Garrison is doing has made her blood boil, and the idea of leaving Keith there for any longer is repulsive. But they also can’t rush into this, not if they want any chance of success.

“Not yet. We need to plan more, be prepared. How good are your firewalls?”

The smirk Katie gives her makes Colleen wonder when on earth her daughter learned to flout authority so much.

* * *

Before this, before everything had happened, Keith was sure the most pain he had ever been in was when that one cruelly inventive foster father had beaten him with a hot cast iron pan.

Now in the span of a month, he has several new “most painful” moments.

Wait...has it been a month? Without any windows and no attempt by the scientists to simulate some kind of schedule, Keith’s sense of time has gotten a little fuzzy. It feels like a month. Maybe.

He misses Shiro. He misses Adam.

But anyway, the point is that he’s pretty sure he’s in for a lot more pain today. Dr. Brandt is here; it’s been a while since he showed up, apparently content to let his underlings run whatever tests they felt like. But now he’s back, him and his stupid clipboard, fiddling with some of the equipment, and it seems he only comes to observe the really awful, invasive tests.

There’s also the fact that they’ve tightened the straps down onto the table so much that they’re practically cutting off his circulation. That probably doesn’t bode well.

Brandt eventually strolls over to the table and kneels down so they’re at eye-level, like a parody of some actually caring medical doctor.

“Do you know we soundproofed this room just for you?” he asks, his face uncomfortably close, breath hot on Keith’s cheek, but the restraints are too tight for him to even budge. “We aren’t that far away from the other science labs, and some of my colleagues just wouldn’t understand the necessity of all this. So we made sure they wouldn’t hear anything untoward. But, well…

“We can’t use anesthetic, you see. Don’t know how it would work with your… _unique_ biology. So the soundproofing is really going to come in handy today.” Tall Blond Woman chooses that moment to walk through Keith’s field of vision, carrying a wickedly long scalpel. “Did you know this is actually a modified autopsy table?” Brandt continues. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

Jesus Christ. They’re going to kill him.

“We’ve gotten all the information we can without delving a little deeper, I’m afraid. I’d apologize, but,” he shrugs offhandedly, “I’m not convinced yet that you can feel pain.”

“We’re all set, sir,” Mean Bald Man says from somewhere on Keith’s right. Brandt stands up and takes his usual place in the corner of the room, not caring that Keith is futilely tugging at the restraints.

Brandt brings his clipboard up, clicks his pen a few times, and fucking _smiles_. “Go ahead, then.”

It might be the shock, but he feels almost numb through the first incision. Like it’s just a long, awkwardly-located papercut if he tries not to think about it too hard.

The second incision isn’t as kind. Nor is the third. He can’t see anything, the band around his forehead keeping him from looking down at his chest, but he can smell the coppery scent of his own blood.

It turns out that Brandt was right.

No matter how loudly Keith screams, no one comes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was supposed to be the last, but it got a bit out of hand, so be on the lookout at some point for a new third chapter!

Keith, to put it bluntly, is surprised that he’s not dead. Everything hurts, and he’d be too weak to run even if they removed the restraints, and the stitches they put in make the pain flare up any time he so much as twitches.

But he’s not dead.

The next few days honestly aren’t that bad, if you factor out the whole “kept against his will for experiments” thing. They actually give him pain medicine a few times. He knows it’s more to test his reactions to it than any sort of kindness on their part, but it’s still a relief. And then they mostly leave him alone, only occasionally coming in the room to observe his body starting to heal the damage they’ve done to it.

So yeah, all things considered, this is like a vacation. A much-needed rest. He even starts to let himself think that maybe, _maybe_ , they’re done with all their tests. What more could they possibly do anyway?

He should have known it wouldn’t last.

* * *

Colleen has watched several more of the videos after making sure Katie’s copies were deleted - she did NOT need to see these. Her plan in watching the videos was to see if she could discern some kind of pattern to the tests and find an opening where they didn’t seem to be monitoring him. In the process though, she’d seen some things that were going to haunt her. Things you shouldn’t do to a living person.

She's met some researchers in her life whose ethics were questionable at best, but this is the first time she's truly had reason to call someone an Evil Scientist.

As awful as it is, it pays off. There do seem to be some time periods when they tend to leave Keith alone. Early evening seems to be the best chance: Colleen can’t exactly show up to the Garrison at 3am and claim innocence, but a trip before dinner time to check on some of the effects lingering in Sam’s old office? Hopefully no one would suspect anything.

And in the meantime, she calls up anyone she can think of. The pre-med student she shared a coffee-shop table with during crowded times at the university. Her entire botany cohort, one of whom happens to be married to an excellent lawyer. That one somewhat shady contact in the State Department who occasionally asks her opinion on invasive plant species. It makes her feel as if she's running some sort of Black Ops. But then again, she and her daughter are about to bring down half the security system of a government building and then sneak a person out of the basement, so maybe that's not too off-base. In the end, she’s amassed plenty of supplies and support. If they’re truly going to do this, it’s now or never.

It takes a week before she feels prepared, and even then she hesitates just as they’re about to leave. The specimen fridge in their lab is stocked with IV fluids and medication. Katie’s programs are all ready to run. Katie herself is peeking up at Colleen from the floor of the backseat of her car, mostly hidden by a blanket.

“Are we going or what?”

This...this could go horribly wrong in so many ways. They could be stopped before they even get to Keith. Is it fair of her to risk Katie’s safety for a cadet they barely know?

But Katie seems to be reading her mind again. “We need to do this, Mom. We can’t just leave him there. Besides, he’s sort of like family, right? Someone else whose life got messed up by the Kerberos failure.”

She’s right, of course. Colleen would never forgive herself if she didn’t do something, and right now they’re in the best possible position for success. She’s just going to hope that luck is on their side today.

Things seem to be going smoothly. The guard at the gate doesn’t give her car anything more than a cursory glance when she announces who she is, easily missing Katie, whose programs have been primed now that they’re within range of the Garrison. She sits in the parking garage for a moment: if anyone happens to ask, she’s trying to console herself before she enters the Garrison to start cleaning out Sam’s office.

It’s also a good cover for Katie to begin taking down the cameras. Her program really is genius. To anyone watching the feeds, it will appear as though nothing is out of the ordinary. But if someone looks closely, really closely, they’ll realize that the feeds are actually replaced with footage from a week ago. And the program backdates itself: the feeds will actually appear to have been tampered with hours before Colleen arrived on base. Hopefully, that will be enough to throw suspicion off of the Holts. They’ll get in, get Keith, get out, and no one will be any wiser until the scientists check on him later that night, at which point he’ll be safely ensconced in their guest bedroom.

It’s one thing to imagine breaking into the Garrison in theory. It’s entirely something else to actually be doing it in practice. Colleen does her best to pretend like she’s supposed to be there, but luckily Katie has scraped enough information from the servers to know where any important figures are supposed to be at any given time. They’d plotted this course three days ago based on all the officers’ schedules, and they make it straight from the garage to the room they’re fairly certain holds Keith without running into a single soul.

This feels too easy.

But it continues to be easy as Katie hacks the lock in a matter of seconds, and when the door opens, the room is empty, save for the figure lying on the table.

Seeing him in person is so much worse than seeing the videos. With the videos, Colleen could almost convince herself she was just watching some kind of sick horror movie. But here he is, almost deathly still on the table. So still that Colleen almost fears they’re too late, but then his chest finally rises with a slow breath.

Keith must be heavily sedated to be breathing that slowly, and Colleen can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. It will be easier to help him if he’s not in pain and freaking out, but it almost seems like a breach of trust to pick him up and move him in his sleep. Keith hasn’t exactly had a lot of autonomy lately, and she can’t imagine waking up in a new, unfamiliar location after being abducted in the first place will be good for him.

But there’s nothing for it.

The restraints are loose, at least - the scientists know he can’t escape when he’s so far under - so it’s relatively easy to undo the catch under the table that causes the straps to retract. Keith’s skin is red, rubbed raw in a few places where he’d clearly tried to break out through sheer force of will. Not for the first time, Colleen wishes she could rain hell onto the Garrison for what’s happened, but if they want to have any chance of a normal life after this, she and Katie will need to pretend to be completely ignorant to this whole thing. It’s almost unbearable, knowing that she won’t be able to punish the scientists for what they’ve done to Keith, but it’s the price they’ll need to pay to keep him safe.

She pulls out the large fleece throw that had taken up most of the space in the duffel bag she’d brought along, thankful that she can at least give Keith a little comfort and dignity while they make their escape, even if it did mean she had to leave her first aid kit at home. She tries to be as gentle as she can as she wraps the blanket around him and then lifts Keith into her arms, but the poor thing is completely out.

She panics for a moment when she realizes that Katie is no longer in the room with her, but then her daughter scampers out of the next room over, laptop balanced on one forearm while she holds a very large knife in her other hand.

“What? If someone stole my super cool alien knife, I’d want it back.”

Again, everything seems just too easy as they slowly make their way back upstairs. Katie’s program is holding steady, her schedule is proving correct, and in a few minutes they’ve made their way out of the science building and back into the administrative complex. They’re nearly home free - they’ll get back to the car waiting in the garage, cover Keith and Katie with the blanket in the backseat just like they’d done on the way here, and if anyone asks, Colleen will claim that she was just too overcome with grief to actually take any of Sam’s old things out of the office.

And then everything goes to hell.

The alarm on the wall starts flashing red as a siren blares through the air. While it is technically possible that it’s a drill or some completely unrelated situation, chances are that it has something to do with the unconscious kid in Colleen’s arms. She and Katie share a panicked look before ducking into the nearest room, which happens to be some kind of storage closet. And not a moment too soon, as there are suddenly footsteps and voices on the other side of the door.

“The program’s working fine,” Katie whispers next to her. “No one has even tried to do anything about it yet.”

Which means that one of the scientists must have gone to check on Keith sooner than they’d expected. And it also means that they’ll start looking at the camera feeds and realize that they’re incorrect. And, Colleen realizes with a sinking stomach, Katie’s schematics and schedules are useless when the Garrison is on high alert like this. They can’t leave the room without being seen in the hallway, but they can’t stay here indefinitely. And if someone thinks to check for her in Sam’s office...

It’s no use worrying about what might happen. They’re stuck here for a while, and that’s that.

With nothing else to do, she contemplates the unconscious teenager sitting in her lap. She’d remembered Keith being sort of gangly in that way that kids were just after they’d had a growth spurt, their body shooting up and not yet filling out. But now he is dangerously thin, almost gaunt. Colleen knows from the earliest videos that it isn’t all from the experiments. Loss and the same kind of depression she’s been fighting aren’t great for the appetite, but being strapped down to a table for over a month and poked and prodded and cut open (and god, she is never going to get that video out of her head, how could you _do that_ to a _child_?) have made him lose even more weight he hadn’t really had to lose.

“They’ve started to fight back,” Katie interrupts her thoughts, her voice hushed and annoyed. “They’re bad at it, but they know someone is in the system.”

“How long can you hold them off?”

“A while,” Katie says. “Depends on how good they are.”

Keith stirs after a few minutes of relative quiet. His eyes open in the barest slits - he’s clearly not lucid, but he’s aware enough to register the warm body holding him and try to curl further into it.

“Mom?” he asks, voice bleary and thready. Colleen remembers Shiro telling them in a low voice that Keith was an orphan, his father dead and his mother having left long ago, and her heart breaks all over again. Katie is wide-eyed and pale next to her, torn between watching her camera program continue to run and watching Keith struggle awake.

“I’m here,” Colleen says, because she doesn’t have the heart to tell him the truth. “Rest now.” She runs her fingers through his hair, mostly to give her hands something to do. Keith goes quiet and still, his eyes slipping closed again with a sigh, and then he’s completely limp, deadweight in her arms. Sleep is the best place for him right now, but they can’t stay here forever. They need to figure out if there’s a pattern to the patrols outside, but she can’t do that while holding the very person they’re looking for, and no way in hell is she leaving Keith and Katie alone and defenseless in this room. The option to send Katie out as a scout feels just as dangerous; she had trusted the Garrison once, before they’d experimented on a child, before they’d sent her husband and son to their deaths. Right now, after everything she’s seen, she doesn’t trust that a trigger-happy Garrison officer wouldn’t shoot Katie given half a chance.

Before she can come up with a workable plan, the door opens with a hiss of pneumatics.

_Too late_.

She clutches Keith tighter to her chest and vows to go down swinging, sees Katie bringing her fists up next to her as well, but the man in the doorway slams to a halt in front of them.

Lieutenant Adam Wasan stares back at her.

“Keith?” he asks in a harsh whisper

“Lieutenant, please…”

“They said...they said someone was trying to steal the information from an experiment, they didn’t...they never…” He trails off, and Colleen can literally see the moment his mind connects ‘missing experiment’ with ‘Keith didn’t run away.’

“I know it’s a shock, but you need to help us.” She's afraid for half a second that he'll turn them in, but Wasan reaches forward to touch the side of Keith's face ever so gently, just for a moment.

“Stay here. I’ll tell them this hall is clear and come back for you when it’s safe.”

Keith needs medical attention; he needs the IV fluids and nutrients and pain relievers that Colleen has waiting for him at home. But what he needs even more is for them to not be found.

It's a nerve-wracking hour or so, huddled in their little supply closet, hoping that no one else would patrol the halls, that Wasan could sneak away from his post to help them, and that Katie's program would continue to block the cameras. Every once in a while Katie needs to counteract something the Garrison does to try to take out the program, and she’s torn between pride at her daughter and disbelief that some of the nation’s best coders are being taken down by a 14-year-old.

Wasan finally does come back, still pale and shellshocked, but there’s a steely resolve in his expression. Colleen feels the tiniest bit guilty now for suspecting him, but given everything that she’s learned in the past week, she decides to cut herself some slack.

“They’ve moved on to focusing on the student dorms,” Wasan says, not taking his eyes off Keith. “If we hurry, we might make it out undetected. Whatever you’re doing to jam the cameras, it’s working, so as long as we don’t run into anyone else we’ll hopefully be okay.”

It doesn’t exactly give her a lot of confidence, but it’s better than nothing. “I need you to take Keith,” Colleen says. Keith is thinner and lighter than he should be, true, but he’s still more weight than she’s used to carrying for any length of time.

And she also gets the feeling that maybe Wasan needs Keith just as much as Keith is going to need him.

Adam does so, shifting Keith into his arms as gently as possible, making sure the blanket is tucked tightly around him, choking on a single sob when Keith’s head lolls against his shoulder. “I should have known he hadn’t run.”

“Lieutenant. Adam. I know everything is a mess but we need to get him to safety. We can all have a mental breakdown later.”

Adam nods his head toward the door and Colleen takes the hint to peek out of the doorway. No one else appears to be in the hallway, so they all file out, trying to be as quiet as possible. Colleen knows the Garrison well enough, having been in these halls for countless events, so she takes the lead. Katie holds back, bringing up the rear as she checks on her laptop once more, putting Adam and Keith in the middle. Colleen wonders vaguely if they’ve subconsciously planned that to try to protect Keith, but then realizes neither she nor Katie will be much use against the Garrison if they’re spotted.

Still, it’s the thought that counts. And at any rate, they’ve got assistance now. They might actually make it.

* * *

After weeks of searching the desert for hoverbike crashes and desiccated corpses, it's a relief to have a living body in his arms. The puffs of air against Adam’s neck are shallow, but they’re steady, and they’re _there_.

But what the fuck had they done to him?

“My car is in the parking lot,” Colleen says, interrupting his thoughts. Right. Get Keith to safety and _then_ raise hell with the Garrison. “But there’s no way we’ll be able to get him out there without being seen.”

“Does the Garrison know you’re here?”

“Yes, I told them I wanted to look through some of the effects left in Sam’s office. They don’t know I brought Katie, though.”

At the very end of the admin wing, right next to where Commander Holt’s office is (he’d requested that one specifically, claiming it had the best light for his plants) is an old, rusting door. It’s unassuming, painted over multiple times. At first glance, it looks just like a door to some disused server room that was abandoned after the Garrison switched from the outdated fiberoptics system. It’s not even on any of the Garrison maps and schematics.

Which is good for them, because Adam knows firsthand it’s not just an empty room.

“We’ll head to the Commander’s office, then,” Adam says, feeling more settled as a plan starts to take shape in his mind. “We’ll leave you there, and Katie and I will continue on. I know a safe way out of the building.”

Adam needs to pay attention to their surroundings, so it’s a necessity to shove back a lot of the questions. What had the Garrison been doing? Why had they taken Keith? How had the Holts even known about all this?

Most of Keith is still hidden underneath a blanket, and he’s definitely lost weight. Adam is afraid to see what damage the blanket is hiding.

But all of that needs to take a backseat: what’s important now is getting Keith and the Holts out safely. The administrative wing is less crowded than it was earlier, but they could still easily be spotted if he isn’t on guard.

With the loss of the Kerberos Mission and Keith’s disappearance (well, apparently not a disappearance after all…) Adam’s luck hasn’t been particularly good recently. So it really shouldn’t be a surprise when, at a pause before the T intersection between the officers’ wing and the main corridor, there are sudden footsteps screeching to a halt behind them.

Adam turns around to look, trying futilely to shield Keith from view in the process. Maybe his luck is still just barely holding out, though, because the people behind them aren’t the officers he knows should be patrolling this hallway.

It’s that damn pair of cadets.

“McClain, Garrett, I need you to go back to your rooms and pretend you never saw this or I swear to God I will make your lives hell. Am I understood?” It’s a longshot - McClain especially has never exactly been a fan of Keith, but he’d much rather threaten them into obedience than try to knock them out while his arms are still full of an unconscious, formerly-lost ex-cadet.

“That’s Keith,” McClain breathes, completely ignoring him, as usual.

“What happened to him?” Garrett asks in a whisper. “What...I thought he dropped out and ran away!”

“The Garrison lied, didn’t they? What did they do to him?”

Before any of them can reply, there’s the sound of footsteps and voices around the corner. Adam swears under his breath; if the officers turn toward them there’s no place to hide, and there should be another patrol coming up behind them, back the way they came. They’re trapped.

McClain and Garrett share a look and a nod between them, give Adam a quick salute, and then go sprinting down the hall toward the intersection, making as much noise as physically possible.

“Wow Hunk!” McClain shouts. “Isn’t it so thrilling to break the curfew rules and not be in our dorms right now?”

“I’ve never felt so alive!” Garrett answers, and the two officers who were about to round the corner go chase after them, instead.

“Wow,” Katie says. “That was…”

“Too close,” Colleen answers.

Unexpected, is what it was. Adam hopes they don’t get in too much trouble for it, but considering they were out of their rooms to begin with, he doesn’t feel overly guilty. Just, surprised. He’ll need to check in with them at some point, once this whole day is over.

But in the meantime, he needs to focus again.

There are a couple more near-misses and close calls, but they finally make it to Commander Holt’s old office. Not much has been moved since Adam was here last, but it’s only been a couple months since the mission was declared a loss. He imagines that Colleen hasn’t really been eager to start emptying the room out.

There’s a hiss and a quiet curse as Katie sits down at the desk, typing furiously. “They’ve finally started to figure out a workaround. I’d estimate that we’ve got about twenty minutes until the cameras are back online.”

“What’s your plan, Wasan?” Colleen asks. She looks tired. Not that Adam can blame her. And he doubts he looks any better, all things considered.

“Katie, is there anything else you can do for the cameras?”

“No. Now that they’re in the system, my subroutines are running on their own. I might be able to give us an extra minute or two, but even that would be a longshot.”

Twenty minutes to get himself, Katie, and Keith into the tunnels, and then come back to the office with Colleen before the cameras are online. This should work. Hopefully.

“Alright. Colleen, I need you to stay here. If the cameras are back online before I return, give anyone that finds you your best ‘terrified, grieving widow’ acting job.”

“And just where are you going to be taking my daughter, Wasan?”

“The room next door is an old entrance to the lockdown tunnels that were put in place in World War III. There aren’t any cameras down there and I suspect most people have completely forgotten they exist. There’s an exit out several miles into the desert, beyond the Garrison’s perimeter. Katie will take Keith out that way.”

Colleen looks ready to protest, and Adam can’t really blame her. If their positions were flipped, he’d be loath to let Keith out of his sight. But this is also the only way he can think of that all of them might get out of this situation.

“I know,” he says before she can fight him. “But you said it yourself, if they see Katie here with you and realize you hid her on the way in, they’ll ask questions. They’ll put two and two together. I’ll be with her as long as I can in the tunnels, and the most dangerous things down there are cobwebs and dust.”

“Fine,” she says eventually. “But if anything happens to her, I’m holding you responsible.”

“You saved my kid, I’ll protect your kid,” Adam says, choosing to ignore Katie’s own huffed claim about how she doesn’t need any protection.

Colleen sweeps Katie into a quick hug and then surprises Adam by softly ruffling Keith’s hair. “Keep them safe. Both of them.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Adam says, and then it’s into the tunnels before they waste any more time. The tunnels are just as dark and depressing as Adam remembers, but they’re also thankfully completely empty. He wants to relax, now that they’re underground and some place he knows that people won’t look for them, but they’re also on a time crunch. There’s a jeep about half a mile down the tunnel that he’s aiming for, so they can’t dawdle.

Katie keeps up well beside him; away from the safety of her computer program, though, Adam can see the stress and fear in her face. She’s been incredibly brave this whole time but he thinks the realization of what they’ve just done is starting to get to her. Time for a little distraction.

“You know, it’s because of Keith that I even know these things are down here.”

“Yeah?”

“He got bored one day. Takashi and I were busy grading papers I think, and Keith didn’t have the patience to wait for us. He ended up finding these things by accident. Scared the shit out of us when we realized he wasn’t in the apartment anymore, then after about two hours of frantic searching, Keith shows up, all covered in dust. He claimed we couldn’t reprimand him because he technically hadn’t left Garrison grounds. Takashi always found these tunnels really creepy, but Keith seemed interested, so he and I have actually done a fair bit of exploring. It’s how I know that they lead outside.”

“You really care about him,” Katie says, glancing up at the unnaturally still Keith in his arms.

“We were a family. Things got messed up - _I_ messed things up, when Takashi left on the mission. I didn’t want him to go, and the three of us got into a massive fight. Keith and I didn’t talk, until… And then he was too hurt to let me help. If I had just swallowed my pride, I could have been there for Keith. I should never have let any of this happen.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Katie says eventually. “I didn’t trust the Garrison’s after their obviously fake story about the mission, but even I didn’t expect this. It’s not your fault.”

Adam’s not too sure about that, and besides, it’s Keith’s forgiveness that he’ll really try to get. But it’s a good gesture nonetheless.

Adam gets Katie talking about her camera program for the rest of the walk, frankly amazed at what this kid can do, and it works. Katie is still passionately discoursing on the differences between double- and triple- modulation (Adam is too embarrassed to admit that he has absolutely no idea what any of it means) by the time they reach the jeep. It’s one of the old models, practically ancient in that it still runs on gasoline. But a quick check shows that it’s got a full tank of the stuff and the keys are in the ignition. Adam is just about to try to figure out how to open the door with his arms full when he realizes that this entire plan hinges on Katie driving a vehicle.

“...How old are you?” he asks with a sideways glance.

"We just broke into a secure facility to release a human the Garrison has been keeping locked up in the basement for experiments and this is what you're concerned about?"

"We’re way past worrying about criminal activity. I’m more worried about whether you’ll crash the jeep into a wall. Do you even know how to drive?"

"Yes," she says flatly. "I know how to drive. Matt taught me in a fit of teenage rebellion." Adam had never been particularly close to Matt Holt, but that tracks, from what Takashi had told him.

Katie opens the back door for him and then gets situated in the front. It’s definitely a different type of car than Matt would have used to teach her, but the actual act of driving it should be mostly the same. Adam lays Keith gently down across the backseat, hesitating a bit when he whimpers and clings to Adam's uniform.

"You could come with."

"Too dangerous,” Adam explains. “If I suddenly disappear they'll suspect me, and Keith is going to need all the supporters he can get. Just...be careful. Keep him safe. Please - he's all I have left."

"I know the feeling," Katie says from the driver's seat. And fuck, she does, doesn't she.

Adam closes the door and watches the jeep peel down the tunnels. For the moment, things are mostly out of his hands.

He runs back up and gets into Commander Holt’s office just as the cameras start blinking back to life. Colleen has a box of things from the Commander’s desk that he suspects were thrown in there haphazardly, but they both agree to wait a bit before making their way back to the garage. They don’t want to risk anyone associating the now operational cameras with their departure. Plus, it will help both of their alibis, to be seen on the cameras exactly where Colleen said she would be.

It’s about half an hour later that they leave the office, trying to act as natural as possible when the guard stationed at the elevator down to the parking garage greets them.

“Ah Wasan, there you are! We’ve been looking for you,” Commander Henderson says with just the slightest bit of reproach.

“Apologies, sir. I found Dr. Holt in the Commander’s old office. She was very frightened of all the danger and commotion, so I stayed with her and then wanted to walk her to the entrance once she felt well enough to leave.” Adam has been thanking every deity he can think of that he _was_ actually tasked with checking that corridor.

There’s a gruff acceptance to that story. “We’ll need Lt. Merryweather to search your car before you leave. Standard procedure, ma’am.”

Colleen gives Adam a nod as she follows the lieutenant into the elevator.

Somehow, they’ve managed to pull this off.

* * *

Keith dozes just below the surface for a while. He's pretty sure they gave him that barbital stuff, just like they always do when they need to leave him alone and don't want to risk him escaping. They've given it to him a lot. He wonders if he could get addicted to it.

Then he wonders if that even matters, considering he doesn’t think he'll ever get out of this hellhole.

He drifts for a bit - no sense in fighting when he's under like this - but then later there are voices. He doesn't recognize them: new scientists, maybe? One of them seems too young, though. Another kid like him? Does he have random alien siblings he doesn’t know about?

Before he can figure it out things are shifting around him and there are arms, gentle and secure, and achingly familiar.

He's been in this situation before. Sick, and unable to breathe - a weird food allergy to sesame seeds (and maybe that should have tipped him off to the fact that he wasn't human, no one was allergic to _sesame_ ) - and Shiro had been panicking too much to help. It had been Adam that had scooped him up and ran him straight to the infirmary.

Shiro is gone, Keith has accepted that, but Adam…

Somehow Adam is here.

He drifts down again, deeper, before he can puzzle out whether this is real.


End file.
